by Joshua Guiterrez, Loomis News

Hamid Noorani, a pioneer of modern Loomis, died Jan. 22 at the age of 82.  Thanks to his adept cardiologist, Dr. Daniel Ebenezer, he lived a joyful and productive life despite suffering from congestive heart failure for over 35 years.  

The Pakistani-American who founded Homewood Lumber in 1990, was instrumental in forming the South Placer Heritage Foundation and its efforts to restore Lommis’ historic fruit packing shed into the Blue Goose Event Center on Taylor Road. In addition, Hamid guided Homewood Lumber’s support of local schools, youth sports teams, boy scouts and multiple charitable causes.

From his incredibly humble childhood in Bombay, India, to his youth spent in Karachi, Pakistan, Hamid always attempted to better himself and the community in which he lived. The same mindset was true when Hamid cultivated business success in Livermore, Roseville and then Loomis.

“Dad was a seer of potential, a believer in making the possible happen,” said his daughter Mimi Noorani.

Scott Paris, owner of High Hand Nursery, said men like Hamid do not come around very often.

“I don’t believe that we will ever really know the true impact that Hamid had on this community,” Paris said. “He was a kind, gracious, and humble man. He was always a friend. Always willing to help for the greater good. We are a better community because of him. I will truly miss him and his friendship.”

Randy Elder, president of the South Placer Heritage Foundation, said he first met Hamid just as the effort to protect the Blue Goose began around 1995. With Loomis and Placer in desperate need of a large meeting place, Elder said Hamid stepped up in a monumental way.

“Hamid called in all his cards to draft members of the Sacramento region business community, so we could build out was to become the Event Center,” Elder said. “We had 45 days from the construction plans approval date to get the work done for the first Cowpoke Fall Gathering. We had very little money, so Hamid donated much of the building materials we needed to do the job. We finished work on the last possible day, all largely done with donated labor, materials and cash orchestrated by Hamid. The Blue Goose Renovation Project happened only because Hamid was involved in it.”

For Sherrie Edgar of Doupnik Family Leasing, Hamid’s contributions to Loomis were felt both as an engine to Loomis’ economy and as a friend to the family.

“I think Hamid’s biggest contribution to the town of Loomis was starting Homewood Lumber,” Edgar said. “This brought jobs and a tax base to the town, which was important to Loomis at that time. Hamid was a very sincere and thoughtful person, someone the Doupnik Family was proud to call a friend and fellow business owner.”

by Nilou Noorani

San Francisco! Finally he was here – in the-land-of-the-lucky! It was 1955 and he was seventeen years old. He had dreamed about San Francisco and Berkeley since years. The pictures of these foreign places had motivated him to bike in the intense Karachi heat-and-dust to school every day. The pictures had motivated him to work twice as hard in school so that he took the top slot and earned a scholarship. The scholarship -- a princely sum of five thousand Rupees -- translated into just a little over fourteen hundred dollars. A good chunk of that – some four hundred dollars was used up for his passport, airfare and University application fees. He still had to pay a sizable sum of nearly two hundred dollars for college tuition and other fees at prestigious UC Berkeley. In addition to this he had to pay rent for a room for the semester and have money to eat for a few weeks until he found a job. He had the optimism of youth and the hardiness of a Karachi-baked-bread. He had come from a place where life was not easy or comfortable, to a place which was supremely comfortable -- but not easy at all – as he would soon discover.

The flight had been long with many stopovers for refueling as was normal in 1955. The plane stopped in Beirut, Cairo, London, New York, and Chicago before it finally touched down in San Francisco. He had never seen such expanses of fertile land, mountains and lakes. There was room enough for the rest of the world to come here and settle down. But the rest of the world had to stay where they were. America was the land-of-the-lucky, as most people from south Asia like to believe. Yes, Hamid knew he was one of the few who had made it to this destination.

The plane landed at the airport and after fetching his hand-me-down luggage trunk (which was full of items that he may never need) Hamid proceeded to ask at the information desk about the next train to Berkeley (in those days a train ran on one level of the Bay Bridge). He had to take a bus first to the center of San Francisco and when he arrived there, he saw a maze of streets and buildings. A cab stopped near him. Hamid asked about the train to Berkeley . The cabbie told him to get in and he would take him there. The cabbie drove him a half a block to the next intersection which was practically across the street. “Give me a dollar” said the cabbie.

Hamid never forgot that dollar. That dollar was as much as thirty five round-trip bus rides in those days in Karachi. He thought of all the times that he had gone on bike to school, sweating and baking in the sweltering 100 degree summer heat. He had made it his goal to save money for the trip to America. Taking a cab or a rickshaw was out of the question. Now he had spent an entire dollar just to get across the street. The cabbie who took the dollar perhaps saw it differently – he charged a skinny kid with a big old trunk just a dollar to get across the busy street.  Every person sees the same thing a little different from his companion. Take two persons from opposite ends of the globe and they would see the same thing from a completely different perspective.

Later, his different and foreign perspective would serve him well. Later, he would draw upon his experience on how to avoid potholes as he had come from a land of potholes. He had learned to bike around the potholes as a child. While biking in Karachi he had learnt how to set a goal and get there despite the heat. Later, Hamid would learn to spend dollars without first calculating the exchange rate. Later, much later, Hamid would run a company with hundreds of employees. Later he would have disagreements with his partner. Later he would learn that in America too, dollars are stolen by others, for no sound reason, and that in every case the perpetrator finds justifiable reasons in court and that justice itself is a joke at times (though it was a lot better than where he came from).  

He realized that there are always potholes that one does not see and one is flung into the dirt on the side of the road; he knew that the only choice is to get up, dust of the dirt and keep going, as the bruises would heal in time. After all he was in the land-of-the-lucky (but only people who came from elsewhere realized this).  

Later he would form a new business that would grow and flourish and do well in good times and manage to survive in bad times. Hamid had found out soon enough (on his first day in America) that even here people get taken and hoodwinked to part with their dollars. Later, fifty years later, he had learned to spend dollars the way Americans do without first calculating the exchange rate. My brother Hamid always was and still is a very generous person.

But he never forgot that first dollar!